Last week, I wrote about why approaching your feelings can feel like too much. If we learned early on to turn away from our emotions, turning toward them can feel daunting. It's not that we've done anything wrong. It's usually a reflection of where we are in reconnecting with ourselves. If this sounds familiar, welcome in. You might be wondering: okay, so what now?
Building safety within yourself takes space, time, and patience. But it's not always a journey you have to take alone. Let's talk about coregulation and the role it can play in your relationship with your feelings.
Why Starting to Feel Can Be So Distressing
When we learn that it's safest to avoid our feelings, our nervous system can instinctively pivot when they start to come online. Our hearts race, our eyes widen, our hands get clammy or restless, and there can be an urge to change the subject or leave the room. Our bodies respond as though a real threat has appeared, and they reach for the tools that have kept us safe before. That's not a sign something is wrong with you. It's your system doing what it learned to do.
What Coregulation Actually Is
Coregulation is the process of one nervous system supporting another toward a felt sense of safety and calm. It happens through cues we pick up unconsciously: tone of voice, pace of speech, facial expression, eye contact, and embodied presence. Our bodies are constantly reading the bodies around us for safety or threat, long before we have words for it.
Take a toddler whose favorite toy just broke. They're devastated but can't say why. They cry, stomp, throw their hands. A caregiver might sit beside them and take a few deep breaths, or name how sad it is to lose something you love. With the presence of another body that lets their emotions ebb and flow, the toddler's distressed body settles, time and time again. Over time, they build trust that emotions can come and go.
If that space wasn't available, we may not know how to wade through our feelings, because we were never given tools to support ourselves through them. I've written more about how these patterns get passed down in my post on intergenerational trauma.
When You Were the One Doing the Regulating
For some of us, coregulation wasn't something we received. It was something we provided.
If you grew up with a caregiver whose emotions dominated the household, your body likely learned to coregulate long before you had the words for it. You learned to read the room, soften your tone, and stay calm so everyone else could settle. Nobody taught you this. Your body picked it up as a way of keeping you safe, and from the outside, it looks like maturity, competence, even strength.
Over time, that role can become so familiar that it feels less like something you do and more like who you are: the calm one, the capable one, the one who has it together. With so much energy going toward managing the emotional climate around you, there wasn't much space to get to know your own emotions safely. And if emotions looked big and hard to control growing up, it makes sense that you might not be so keen to feel your own, or that you'd overcompensate by staying composed. You may not have had a safe adult who could guide you through them. That's a lot to carry, and it's a pattern I see closely tied to emotional caretaking.
This is why it can be so reparative to experience the other side: letting your body feel the presence of someone who is finally attuned to you and supportive of you, without having to read their needs first. For a nervous system that has spent years on the giving end, that can feel unfamiliar at first. It can also be deeply healing. What might it be like to be the one who gets to settle?
What Happens When We Coregulate
In the presence of someone safe and attuned, our bodies often shift without us trying. Breathing slows or deepens. Muscles that were bracing soften. Our eyes orient more easily to the room, rather than scanning for danger. There may be a sense of settling, or a bit more space inside.
Coregulation can happen with a partner, a friend, a therapist, or even a stranger. In somatic therapy, we slow down to notice what happens when we brush up against something difficult, or orient toward a resource that feels supportive. The intention isn't to reach any particular outcome. It's to be with our experience and stay connected as we witness it.
Over time, coregulation also teaches us what it feels like to move through an experience instead of getting stuck in it. We learn that it's safe enough to let feelings rise, peak, and shift, like waves. Maybe the tightness eases. Maybe a sigh arrives. Each time, the body learns: this is intense, and I have room to move through it.
Let me say that again — the goal isn't to avoid the highs and lows. It's to build confidence in our capacity to move through them.
When Independence Became the Way to Stay Safe
If you learned to rely on yourself early, letting others into your internal world may not come easily. That wasn't necessarily a preference. It was an adaptation. If comfort wasn't consistently available, or reaching out was met with dismissal or one more burden on someone already stretched, your nervous system learned it was safer to handle things alone. It can look like strength, but it's often a way of protecting ourselves from being hurt again. For children of immigrants, self-reliance and not being a burden may also have been a cultural value, which can make reaching out even harder.
When we become hyper-independent, the body rarely gets the experience of softening in the presence of someone else.
Self-Regulation and Coregulation, Together
This isn't about replacing self-regulation. Grounding, breath work, and other self-soothing practices are valuable, and building them is a core part of my work with clients. Coregulation is an addition: another kind of experience your nervous system can have, one that isn't available when we rely only on ourselves. It can be especially important for those of us who carry histories of relational harm.
The two support each other. Your own practices give you confidence within. Experiences with someone safe show your body it doesn't have to hold everything alone. Over time, it's less about choosing one and more about widening the ways your system can find safety.
If you've leaned on independence for a long time, this may feel unsettling at first, and it's okay to go slowly. Trust gets built in small moments: letting your shoulders drop a little, allowing a pause, noticing you weren't pushed past what felt manageable. My Approach page goes into more detail on how I work, and I've written about the body side of this in How Trauma Lives in the Body. What might it be like to let yourself soften, even a little, in the presence of someone safe?
Small Ways to Practice Coregulation Outside of Therapy
Coregulation doesn't have to start with a big, vulnerable conversation. Here are a few practices you can try out on your own time:
Sitting near someone you trust, without needing to talk
Taking a walk with a friend and noticing how your pace and breath begin to match
Noticing which people leave your body feeling more at ease, and which leave it more on guard
Letting someone help with something small, and noticing how it feels
You Don't Have to Do This Alone
Learning to feel what we were taught to avoid is tender work, and it's often easier to build safety in the presence of someone who can hold space alongside you. As a therapist in San Diego offering online therapy across California and Washington, D.C., I'd love to support you in building new experiences of safety, with another person and within yourself.
If this resonates, reach out here to learn more about working together.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is coregulation? Coregulation is the process by which one person's nervous system helps another feel calmer and safer, through cues like tone of voice, facial expression, presence, and pacing.
Why does it feel scary to start feeling my emotions? If your feelings were dismissed or avoided growing up, your nervous system may have learned to treat emotion as a threat. That's a learned protective response, not a sign that something is wrong with you.
Why am I so good at staying calm for others, but not for myself? If you grew up managing the emotional climate of your household, your nervous system may have learned to regulate others as a way of staying safe. Experiencing the support of someone attuned to you can begin to shift that.
What's the difference between coregulation and self-regulation? Self-regulation is settling your own nervous system. Coregulation involves another person supporting that process. Both are valuable, and they complement each other.
How does somatic therapy use coregulation? The therapist's steady presence and pacing help your nervous system feel safe enough to notice sensation and emotion, and to move through them at a manageable pace. Over time, those experiences help build your own capacity to regulate.
About Me:
Hi, I’m Stephanie Shao (she/her), Licensed Clinical Social Worker (CA 127453; LICSW DC LC200003288). I am a somatic trauma therapist and specialize in intergenerational trauma, bicultural identities, relational attachment & security, and grief & loss. I enjoy integrating both mind and body in my work, alongside practices of mindfulness and self-compassion.
As a human, I identify as a second-generation Taiwanese American. I was born and raised in the D.C. Metropolitan area, and am currently based in San Diego, California. I’m passionate about collective healing and am a big believer that healing takes place in community!
If you are looking for individual counseling, please message me. I’d love to chat more about your individual needs and to explore if we’d be a good fit. I also publish a monthly newsletter, Kindred Collective, if you’d like to stay in touch about upcoming events and all things identity-related. In the meantime, don’t forget to check out some other blogs here. Stay in touch!